Emin Askerov
Cleantech FOAK Advisor

80% of all my problems in all my projects came from having the wrong people on the team. Here are my 3 mistakes in hiring.

Last week, I tuned into an insightful interview with Yair Reems, Partner at Extantia Capital, conducted by Yoann Berno of Climate Insiders. Yair and his team focus on funding climate tech scale-ups, and their perspective is invaluable for founders seeking investment. Here are my three main takeaways from the podcast that you should consider while preparing your pitch: 1. Know Your Competition and Differentiate: When investors like Extantia receive your pitch deck, the first t

Securing that first sale can be a daunting challenge, especially if your customer isn’t also your investor, and you lack a government contract or a lucrative offtake agreement. So, how do you get your foot in the door? Here’s a strategy that’s worked for me: hire a national from a country that’s at the forefront of your technology field. In batteries, that’s China or Korea. In wind energy, it used to be Germany, Denmark, or the Netherlands, but now it’s China. Why does this w

One rainy Amsterdam morning This was not going to be good. I was quietly contemplating how much money we could lose on this deal. I took a sip of strong coffee, to shake off my jet lag, looked at the CEO of LM, the number 1 manufacturer of wind turbine blades in the world, and got back to negotiating my first cross-border multimillion-dollar deal. It is hard to get suppliers to work with your startup. You can’t give them a guarantee that you will eventually pay because you do

What kind of problems should you be looking to solve as a startup founder? Here is a funny example from the heat pump market.

In 2016 I convinced Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation, to invest $1B in wind energy and wind turbine manufacturing. Why did they agree? Let's break it down: 1. Significant Margins from Energy Generation:  The margins were substantial enough to cover all possible losses and penalties, even in a worst-case scenario. 2. Existing Industrial Base in Rosatom:  The company had some confidence in its ability to handle wind turbine manufacturing, as it was currently manuf

Startups like their technology. Can’t blame them. You get to witness awesome feats of engineering when you work with startups. But I tend to treat those like works of art, rather than products. Because they command prices like valuable art, rather than products. Founders tend to focus too much on their technology. This is understandable, but that is not what your corporate purchasing manager is after. To win that B2B contract focus on these three things in this exact priority

Why would you refuse a board position? I want to share the thought process behind my decision in this post.

EU companies seem to be unable to get their gigafactories up and running. Britishvolt, Italvolt cancelled. Freyr and Beyonder are moving out. Northvolt is struggling with quality issues, after almost two years after launch. After so many grand announcements, things look like they are fizzling out. I don’t have the answer. But what I know is that launching large-scale manufacturing is f***ing hard even if you’ve done that once already. Or even twice. When I was just starting o

In the 90s Intel was considering switching to making a completely new chip. It was simpler and consumed less power. It was clear, that the chip application would be on mobile devices, which would also be the future of computing. There was just one problem - it would be less profitable to make them than to continue the production of existing chips. A couple of years later, Steve Jobs approached Intel with an offer to make chips for his new iPhone product. Intel, and Jobs himse

Flying cars are a sign of the future. But do they matter?

Why EV tariffs might actually benefit the Energy Transition? The Energy Transition and Climate Change are too important to ignore tail risk

Technology does not matter. Business structures do. Read my review to see why.

Should we tokenize greentech, and if yes how? I need your help to figure this out. 🙋‍♂️

It took me 10 years to learn how corporate investors think. I will teach you this now in five minutes.

ICE or EV? Or Hybrid? Which one is cleaner? We now have a cool tool to check this!

We now have two newly made hockey sticks - one for stationary storage (ESS) and one for the EV batteries. Find out how one is made.

The world is heating up, and while we're all doing our part to cool things down, we've got a long road ahead. In the meantime, understanding which temperatures are merely uncomfortable and which ones are downright deadly is crucial. Let’s break it down. When the heat is on, our bodies rely on sweating to cool down. Sweat evaporates from our skin, taking heat with it. But what happens when the sweat can't evaporate anymore? Stay in this condition long enough, and you risk orga

Wind could displace fossil fuels in maritime transport faster than hydrogen. This is how it can happen.